Before I could say, “See ya later,” a ridiculously strong arm snaked around my body and hauled me over the car’s center console.
Sprawled across Beck’s lap, I huffed, “Next time, give me a two second warning before you pounce.”
Laughter rumbled deep in his chest. He cradled my face in his palms, then smoothed the hair back from my face. Inhaling deeply, he touched his lips to the tender skin just beneath my ear. When he breathed out, I felt a frission of heat dance across my skin, spreading from the point of contact clear down to my toes. I sighed with pleasure.
“Yum, you smell great,” he murmured.
I stiffened and pushed away. Beck and Nicole, being half-demons, had highly enhanced senses. 275
Beck once told me he could identify my scent from a half-mile away. Somehow, I found that information a little creepy.
He looked down at me, his amber eyes glowing in the dark. “Sorry. Forgot you don’t like the whole sniffing thing.”
I patted his cheek to let him know it was okay. “Word of advice. Next time don’t say, ‘Yum.’
Makes me feel like a French fry.”
“You got it.” He pulled me back in and tucked me under his chin.
It was a very nice feeling, being held by Beck. I listened to the steady beat of his heart and felt at peace for the first time today. Tomorrow, he’d be gone.
A wave of regret crashed over me. Our relationship hadn’t really been tested by distance this summer, because he’d driven home from his summer school program in Seattle every weekend. Once he started his freshman year in September, I knew that wouldn’t happen. Beck must have been thinking the same thing. “I’m gonna miss you.”
“Me too.”
“We’ll keep in touch. I’ll call you.”
Unable to speak, I just nodded and held on tight, my cheek pressed against his heart. He murmured into my hair, “I’ll want to know all about the changeling kid.”
I jerked away in surprise, clipping his chin with the top of my head in the process. “What did you say?”
“Chad,” he said. “The kid you’re babysitting. You know he is a faery. Right?”
Momentarily speechless, I stared at him for a long moment. I was pretty sure the word
“changeling” involved stealing a mortal child and leaving a faery in his place. Finally, I said, “And you know this . . .how?”
“Faeries have a distinctive scent.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “What do they smell like and why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“Juicy Fruit gum and pine needles. And, I didn’t tell you because I knew the smell thing would freak you out.”
I scrambled back over the center console and settled into the passenger seat. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but did you or did you not tell me I smelled like Juicy Fruit gum?
”
He picked up my hand and kissed it. If I’m not mistaken, he also gave it a little sniff.
“Yep,” he said. “Juicy fruit gum, pine needles and rose petals.”
I snatched my hand away. “Well, clearly I’m not a faery.”
He smiled. “You sure about that?”
I started to say, “Of course I’m sure,” but considering I knew zip about my mother and father’s background, uncertainty set in. Totally bummed out, I shook my head in disgust. “I can’t even believe we’re having this conversation.”
Beck leaned across the console and slipped an arm around my shoulder. His lips brushed my ear and he murmured, “Keeps life interesting.”
In spite of my irritation, I smiled, thinking how Beck and his special abilities had changed my life. I mean, could you talk to the average guy about faeries and changelings? What would I do without him?
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Chapter Six
From across the breakfast table, Chad Hostetler gazed at me solemnly. His spoon, dripping with milk and Lucky Charms, was frozen midway between the bowl and his mouth as he studied my face. I had no idea what Chad was thinking. I was trying to forget last night’s bizarre conversation with Beck. Until proven otherwise, I’d assume Chad was a normal ten-year-old kid. Well, maybe not that normal, but who was I to question Chad’s background when I wasn’t sure about my own?
“What would you like to do today?” I asked, gnawing on the cold chicken leg I’d grabbed from the fridge before I left home.
Chad snapped out of his trance and shoveled cereal into his mouth for a full minute. Finally, he set the spoon down and wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his pajama top. “Do you always eat weird stuff for breakfast?”
“I was running late.” Note to self: You are now a role model. Make better nutritional choices.
“Wanna know why I wanted you to take care of me?”
Actually, I did. But, I decided to keep it light in case this was a situation where Chad was madly in love with an older woman. Yeah, really. It was possible. And besides, I wasn’t excited about reentering the world of weird. I said, “Probably because I was highly recommended by your dad. Did he mention you’ll have to hang out at the fruit stand part of the time?”
He didn’t answer and continued spooning Lucky Charms into his mouth. Swear to God, the kid was like a robot pre-programmed for cereal eating. Spoon dipping into bowl. Spoon to mouth. Slurp. Swallow. Repeat.
Finally, he set the spoon down and gazed over my head, his eyes dreamy and unfocused. He glanced at me and smiled. “Yeah, that’ll be cool,” he said. “Hanging out at the fruit stand.”
His eyes flicked upward again. “Right?”
I couldn’t help myself. I looked up. All I saw was the ceiling. Oh. My. God. The kid was hallucinating.
Chad leaned across the table and studied my face. “I thought you’d be able to see them.”
Feeling slightly panicky, I made a little “hmmm” sound while my mind raced at warp speed. Come on, Allie. You earned a certificate of completion in your babysitting class. You can handle this. Unable to come up with a single strategy dealing with possible mental illness, I took the coward’s way out and changed the subject. “Why don’t you get dressed while I clean up the kitchen?”
Chad stood suddenly and gripped the edge of the table. His lower lip trembled and he blinked back tears. “I thought you’d believe me, but you don’t. You’re just like everybody else.”
Shoulders slumped in defeat, he pushed away from the table and headed out of the kitchen. I shot out of my chair.
“Chad, wait!” I cried, feeling deeply ashamed. Chad trusted me and I’d brushed him off like a pesky fly. When I first became aware of my special abilities, I’d have been lost and bewildered without the support of Kizzy and Junior. I’d have felt exactly like Chad was feeling now. “Please don’t go. I promise I’ll listen.”
He walked slowly back to the table, stealing quick glances at my face through dark-fringed lashes, as if deciding whether or not to believe me. Warily, he settled into his chair. I sat and gave him an encouraging smile. “I’m so sorry. I should have called you when you gave 277
me the note at the hospital.”
A flush bloomed in his pale cheeks, but he bit his lip and remained silent.
“Talk to me, Chad. Tell me what you see that other people can’t.”
Finally, he lifted his head, and looked squarely into my eyes for the first time today. “I’ll start with Skelly and Jade.” His voice held a challenge.
I knew this was a test and was determined to ace it. “Yes, tell me about Skelly and Jade.”
“They’re my friends,” he said, then clammed up.
I was pretty sure he wasn’t talking about his school buds and picked my words carefully. “Are they here right now? In this room?”
He gave me a calculating look. “Do you see anybody in this room besides us? Right now?”
“No, but maybe you do.”
“Why do you think that?”
Geez, the kid was making me pay. “Okay, here’s what I think. Your note said, ‘They are all around you.’ The other night you loo
ked over the top of my head and smiled like you saw something or somebody. And, just a few minutes ago, you did it again. So, obviously, you are seeing something I’m not.”
Suddenly, he shifted gears. “My parents broke up because of me.”
I wanted to argue with him. Tell him he was wrong. A little kid like Chad shouldn’t be burdened with guilt over his mom and dad’s divorce. But, hadn’t my own father split because little old Allie was about to pop into the world?
“I know how that feels,” I said.
“You know I’m adopted . . . right?”
I nodded.
“Hang on.” He popped out of his chair. “I’ll be right back.”
He returned with a shoe box, and set it on the table. He lifted the lid, pulled out a handful of old newspaper clippings from the Seattle Times, and spread them out in front of me. “You probably knew I was called ‘the dumpster baby.’ Right?”
“I may have heard something about it,” I said, carefully. I didn’t want Chad to think I was an active member of Peacock Flats’ gossip girls’ posse.
He pointed at one of the articles. Baby Boy Found in Garbage Container. I scanned it quickly. An offduty nurse was walking to her car when she heard a baby crying.
She checked it out, and found a tiny newborn atop a pile of garbage in a dumpster. The nurse was quoted as saying, “He was a tiny, little mite. No blanket. Not a stitch of clothing except for a diaper. Not even a blanket. It was cold. He wouldn’t have lasted through the night.”
Another Times article, Dumpster Baby Improving, was dated two days after the first and quoted a hospital official. “The baby is still undersized, but eating well and putting on weight.”
I quickly scanned the rest of the clippings. Offers of adoption had begun to pour in. A month after the baby was found, he was sent to a foster home while the Department of Social and Health Services decided his fate.
I studied Chad’s face. “So, you got adopted by the Hostetlers.”
Chad nodded gravely. “They’d been trying to have another kid, but couldn’t. So, they got me instead. They told me the name Chadwicke was taped to the diaper.
That’s why they named me Chad.”
“Why do I have a feeling there’s more? Is this where Skelly and Jade come into the story?”
Chad gathered up the newspaper articles and stuffed them back in the shoe box. “Skelly and Jade have been around for as long as I can remember and . . . ”
When his voice faded away, I said, “And you’re the only one who can see them.”
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Chad’s eyes brightened, and a glimmer of a smile appeared. “That’s how I found out I’m a changeling. Skelly and Jade told me.”
I bit my lip, and thought about the odds of hearing the “C” word again within the space of twelve hours. Chalk one up for Beck’s half-demon senses. But, something didn’t compute.
“That’s not the way it works,” I said. “Are we talking about faeries stealing a human baby, and leaving a faery child in its place?”
“Yes.”
I pointed at the shoe box. “There’s nothing about a second baby, a missing human baby, in those newspaper articles.”
The intensity in Chad’s eyes pinned me to my chair. “I did some research on the Internet. A baby did disappeared a few days before they found me in the dumpster. In Bellingham, not Seattle. As far as I can tell, that baby was never found.”
“So, you think the faeries stole the baby in Bellingham and left you in the dumpster. That’s why you think you’re a changeling?” I tried to keep the skepticism from my voice. He heaved a sigh of disgust. “Didn’t I just say Skelly and Jade told me a long time ago? You can ask them yourself, if you want.”
I looked around the room. “Are Skelly and Jade here? Are they faeries?”
“Well, duh,” Chad shook his head in disbelief. “Of course they’re faeries. Pixies, actually. I’m surprised you can’t see them . . . since you have faery blood.”
I folded my arms and glared. “Don’t even go there. No way am I a faery!”
Chad didn’t actually smile, but his lips twitched. “Yeah, right,” he said. “I saw your mother Saturday night. She most definitely has faery blood, which means you do too.”
Was I dealing with a mentally disturbed kid with hallucinations, or was he the real deal? Beck, who knew about these things, seemed to think Chad was for real.
“Okay, for the sake of argument, let’s say you’re right. What makes you think my mother has, uh, faery qualities?”
A full-blown, eye-crinkling, genuine smile blossomed on Chad’s pale face. For the first time since we’d met, he looked like an impish ten-year-old boy instead of a solemn little old man. I grinned back at him and felt something shift in the air between us.
“She glows,” he said. “And so do you.”
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Chapter Seven
I realized I needed answers. But, too bad for me, the person with the answers—Faye, my faery mother, according to Chad—was not an option. If I asked about my birth family, she’d do one of three things: Change the subject. Burst into tears and then make it my problem by saying, “I can’t believe you don’t care about my feelings!” Or, take to her bed with a fake illness. Fortunately, I had another source . . . Faye’s father, Grandpa Claude, who I was forbidden to see. In typical Faye fashion, she would never tell me why he was off-limits, which led me to imagine all kinds of possibilities. Body parts in the freezer. An unnatural fondness for little kids. Hooked on speed. In the Witness Protection Program. So, I guess you could say, it was Faye’s fault I had to sneak around to get the scoop on my DNA.
My favorite teacher, Mrs. Burke, would call this justification, since I’d cleverly figured out how to shift the blame for my actions onto my mother. Okay, I did feel a little guilty, but I’d be willing to bet even Mrs. Burke would want to know if she was descended from faeries. Who wouldn’t?
Last fall, I’d actually had a conversation with Grandpa Claude. Trust me, if Faye had known about our visit, the eruption of Mt. St. Helens would have been a minor belch compared to Faye in one of her hissy fits. My grandfather had been waiting for me when school got out that day. Because of the imagined reasons listed above, I wasn’t about to get in his car. We walked across the street and sat on a park bench in the freezing cold. He claimed he was dying of cancer and wanted to get a peek at his only grandchild. Me.
Then he dropped the bomb: he said my grandmother, Melia, was very much alive, and had deserted her husband and child. In my mother’s version of the story, Melia died when Faye was ten. Obviously, one of them was lying.
Therefore, at exactly 1:15 pm on Monday, Chad and I headed up Highway 97 toward Vista Valley and a meeting with Grandpa Claude. When I phoned him, Grandpa had sounded grumpy, but nowhere near death. I added possible pathological liar to my list. We’d arranged to meet at a Denny’s restaurant located on the south side of Vista Valley. I’d called Mr. Hostetler and told him my grandfather was sick and wanted to see me. OMG, maybe I had inherited the lying gene!
He’d said, “Drive carefully and make sure Chad is buckled in. For some reason, he likes to kneel on the seat and look out the back window.”
I thought I knew why. Chad confirmed it. “I like to watch Skelly and Jade fly behind the car.”
“Well,” I said in my most disapproving tone. “You tell those faeries to get their tiny butts in the car or meet us there.” (Words I had never imagined myself saying before.) I pointed the car north. Chad was buckled into the back seat for safety reasons. Faye always said the front passenger seat was the “suicide seat.” No way would I risk letting Chad ride up front. After all, I was the semi-adult responsible for Chad’s well being.
Even though I knew exactly where we were going, Chad entered the restaurant’s address into the GPS thoughtfully provided by Junior. Chad insisted he always programmed his dad’s GPS. It gave him something to do while I concentrated on my driving. Little did we know the GPS was not exactly what you
’d call “top of the line.”
Because I was a little nervous about driving the ten miles between Peacock Flats and Vista Valley in an unfamiliar, yet powerful car, I crept along in the right lane of the four-lane highway, behind a tractor pulling a flatbed trailer loaded with apple bins. I tried to ignore the impatient sighs coming 280
from the back seat.
“Did you know you can get a ticket for driving too slow?” Chad asked.
“I’m not holding anybody up,” I said.
“At this rate, I’ll be an old man by the time we get there.”
“Yeah, you’ll be old, but alive. Relax. Enjoy the scenery. Is that an eagle?”
Finally, I gathered my courage, turned on the left blinker, moved to the passing lane and zipped around the tractor. After I pulled back into the right lane, I lifted a hand, palm facing backward. Chad slapped it. “Way to go, Earnhardt Junior.”
As we approached the southern end of Vista Valley, the GPS burst to life. A woman’s voice, speaking with a thick Spanish accent, said, “Okay, we almost there. Get ready to turn pretty quick soon.”
Chad burst into laughter. “Say what?”
I smiled. “Guess Junior bought it in Mexico. It’s the thought that counts.”
“You know how to get to Denny’s . . . right?”
I nodded.
“So go past the turn-off,” Chad said. “See what happens.”
As we approached the off -ramp, the voice said, “Si, this is it. Turn! Turn?”
We went by the exit and the next thing we heard was, “Aieee, carrumba! You missed it! Turn around. Pronto!”
I was laughing so hard I could barely see the road. I took the next exit and found a place to pull over. When I got myself under control and could speak again, I cautioned Chad, “Turn that thing off or we’ll have a wreck for sure.”
He didn’t, of course. Instead, he turned up the volume. In spite of Senorita Whatsis, I drove right to the restaurant.
When we walked into Denny’s, I spotted Grandpa Claude sitting in a booth, drinking coffee. He lifted a hand and waved us over. Chad and I slid into the seat across from him. I made the introductions. Grandpa Claude grunted, “How’s it going?”
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